Yesterday marked the beginning of philosophy classes. I think it went quite well for the first day. Mr. H did three things: he talked about a variety of stuff to get our minds started up, initiated minor discussions and asked questions, and warned us that he was going to confuse and twist our brains as we got into the subject. Actually, he was pleased with how well we remembered and utilized what he'd previously taught us. Twice he mentioned that someone told him beforehand that we weren't going to get this stuff, but we were too smart as always!
Hopefully he and Dr. F won't fry my brain as they have both said they will, because I'm going to need a good amount of space for Spanish, which I also started learning yesterday. The Rosetta Stone method of teaching language is to match phrases with pictures, but I need to see if there is a supplementary book of rules that I can reference as well. Why, tell me, is an airplane feminine when a boy is on it, but masculine when a boy is under it??
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.bmp)
4 comments:
Lol, it's the size of the plane that determines whether it's a little girl plane or a big man plane (avioneta or just avión). About the only shortcoming of Rosetta Stone is that one keeps wanting to pick up the side-bits that they aren't focusing on teaching you but that are slipping in anyway, but often can't be sure one's getting them right till they focus on them (e.g. for now what's clear is only the in and the under).
Someone else suggested that to me, and it made sense except that there was absolutely no telling how big the planes were, as the pictures concentrated on the boy in relation to the plane. I guess they thought it was obvious that if the boy was under the plane, the plane had to be pretty big, but who's thinking about that when they're trying to learn another language?
Heh. Yeah. Well, it's not so much something that would be obvious in that first lesson as something that'll be obvious as you get better examples of planes popping up in later lessons -- or if you happen to have noticed that -ette -eta endings in Romance languages seem diminutive-ish, that is, smallish and slightly cute like our -y -ie diminutive only with more emphasis on the little-ness than on the cuteness (but if you're only just learning a Romance language, you can't be expected to have noticed that).
It was the first lesson, so, hey!
I told my parents earlier today that I could tell them what they were doing in Spanish if only they were doing something besides just sitting there, for which RS has not yet taught me the word.
Post a Comment